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Researchers drawing on teachers’ tools: Picturebooks with migrant learners

This blog post springs from a symposium I convened at BERA Conference 2018 entitled ‘Using creative methods to explore complex topics with young participants’. The symposium reflected my...

Regeneration, re-education and an anthem for peace: Insights for education from the re-education of Wilfred Owen during his 1917 convalescence at Craiglockhart War Hospital

From 26 June until early November 1917 2nd Lt Wilfred Owen of the Manchester Regiment convalesced at Craiglockhart War Hospital, Edinburgh. There is limited focus on Owen’s time in Scotland, but...

BERA Bites, issue 1: Early childhood

BERA Bites

The BERA Bites series presents selected articles from the BERA Blog on key topics in education, presented in an easily printable and digestible format to serve as teaching and learning resources...

A posthumanist, materialist perspective on artmaking processes may shed a new light on the practices of social inclusion and exclusion in early years settings

Posthumanist approaches to educational research are on the rise. Such approaches reflect our understanding that the ecological aspect of our social interactions, the material and the objects...

Promoting children’s wellbeing, and right to make choices and engage in playful activities, in restricted environments through music and singing

In an era in which creative subjects are being squeezed in education, the role and value of the arts in health settings is increasingly acknowledged. The all-party parliamentary group on arts,...

The unspoken power of collage

‘Collages manage to satisfy all of my madness. I’m able to make these obsessive things but then I’m also able to make these very strong statements… in my mind they have a very strong...

Creative Writing through the Arts: BERA prize leads to ‘more and better’

In September 2014 teachers in primary schools in England began the academic year with a new National Curriculum. In this statutory framework there is a detailed 70 page programme of study for...

Music education and social justice

Music education and social justice was the subject of a symposium at the 2016 BERA conference. Entitled Social Justice and Music Education in England and Scotland, and the symposium reported on...

Teaching reading: what are our long term goals?

In the light of the House of Commons Education Committee Inquiry into the purpose and quality of education, I’ve been pondering on the primary profession’s long-term goals for teaching reading...

The Arts: An Interesting Approach in the Early Years Settings

The early years settings have a very strong influence on children’s future cognitive and social performance. The interactions and the activities in this area hold an important role in...

School of hard knocks? The Brutalist Playground [RIBA London 10/06-16/08/2015]

It’s 2006 and I’m in Paris with a collective of Three Dimensional Design students, drawn from all three year-groups of the Reading-based undergraduate programme, and two other dedicated staff...

Making a difference through music

Where music making takes place, it often co-exists in a world that is characterised by poverty, disease, and child mortality (cf Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; UN Human Development Index). Human...